Presenting: Puppy Dog Valentines!

I thought they turned out really cute!  I had them laminated b/c a 4 yr old and 2 yr old gluing job may not have held up very well.  :)

The girls worked really hard at signing the Valentines.  Carli did most of them.  Ava added her version of her name to a few lucky ones.

Our Grandparent/Kayla Valentine's turned out pretty well too! 

 

Carli and Ava worked hard on decorating the backs of each one we made.  They got really creative on Grammy & Pa's.  Their drawings included a dino foot, flower and zebra.  :)

 

And finally, I had my first adventure in decorating cookies to include with the girls Valentines.  It was a challenge.  My friend Sarah gave me lots of pointers, supplied the recipe and lots of encouragement.  They turned out pretty good - but man it was a lot of work!  I was relieved when the icing dried hard and though they were far from perfect, they were cute in their own right!

 

The girls earned another surprise on their sticker chart on February 13th.  So when they came home from school on the 14th, their surprise included two pots of red, pink and white tulips.  Carli was pretty excited about the real flowers.  Ava just wanted a cookie.  :)

 

I sent Keith a little scavenger hunt around the house for his gift.  In the end, he found a really awesome card that I made him.  It was pretty simple, but it was fun.  I think he enjoyed it.  :)

 

 

Keith gave me a slushy Dr. Pepper and a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup - which I lovingly shared with my children. 

 

Valentine's Day seems to be more work than Christmas and Halloween!  But it was worth it!  :)





Making Valentines

The girls made puppy dog valentine's this year for their friends and family.  I was very thankful for the Cricut I got last year.  It was put to good use for this little project!  It took a couple of afternoons to get them done, since they did not want to sit still to make all 30 at once!  They did a really good job.  They would pick out the pieces and Keith and I helped them glue them in the appropriate spot.  Pretty sure no two Valentines looked alike!



For our Grandparents and Kayla, we made a special Valentine with our hand and footprints.  The girls are getting pretty good at making things out of their prints!  They were old pros when it came time to make them!

 

Our goal was to have the girls make a Valentine that would mean something to them when they gave it to a friend or family member.  Because they worked hard to make them, it would mean more.  I figure in a few years, they will be content to sign their names on the ready made ones, so we might as well capitalize on making memories now!  :)

 



Great Wolf Lodge Vacation Part 2

Are you ready for a picture overload?  Pretty much The Great Wolf Lodge was a huge hit.  The girls loved it!  I think we may have to go back!  We all got up and were waiting for the waterpark to open Tuesday morning at 9.  We played for 1.5 hrs before having to pull the kids out of the water and get back upstairs, showered and packed to check out by 11.  It was worth it. :)  Now for pictures...

Ava and Keith relaxing in the wave pool, during "off" wave time.

This is happiness.

I was attempting to coax the girls down the slide.  They eventually went without me.

The girls watching the big bucket dump its water.

Group picture of all four kids:

Hayden, Carli, Ava and Kenzie

Relaxing in the wave pool.

It almost put them to sleep!

We tried to get Carli to go down the blue slide the whole time we were there.  It took a promise of ice cream to get her to do it on the last morning.  Once she started, she didn't want to stop.  It was her most favorite part of the whole park!

 

Headed home after an awesome mini-vacation!

 

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

We may have been late for school, left the driveway with cookies on top of our car and insisted wearing lots of pink, even if they were different shades...but we managed to squeeze in a picture with our very obvious "cheese" faces.  :)

 



 

Flowers for the girls, hugs for dad and chocolate for mom pretty much sums up our day!  It was blessed!

Great Wolf Lodge Vacation

In January we lucked out on getting a good Groupon deal with Great Wolf Lodge.  To make it even better, their suites were large enough that we doubled up with the Keown's and each bought a night.  So we got two nights for the price of one, all at 40% off.  We were pretty excited to get to check out this awesome hotel and got to do so during the week so it wasn't very crowded at all.

We headed out right after church service on the last Sunday in January.  The Keown's met up with Kori's sister for lunch and we met up with Uncle Danny's at Babes.  Yummy!  We got to the hotel by 3 pm and got checked in then headed down to check out the waterpark.

The three girls were pretty excited!

Needless to say the waterpark was awesome.  It was pretty crowded on Sunday afternoon, although I am sure it is packed during the summer!  You have to check out by 11 am but you can stay and play at the water park until close.  Thus there were a lot of ppl still around from the weekend.  That didn't stop the girls from having an absolute blast!  We spent a couple of hours at the park, letting the kids wear themselves out before convincing them to go grab some dinner.

The next morning we all kind of slept in a bit (since sleeping in with four kids under the age of 4 means past 7 am).  We got down to the park about 10 and it was not crowded at all.  Kori and I headed off to ride some of the slides since the guys checked them out the day before.  The guys were on kid patrol.  That's pretty much how we spent the morning taking turns playing with the kids and doing the big slides.

The kid area was amazing.  The water was about 1.5 feet deep.  Perfect for 2, 3, and 4 year olds!  The girls LOVED it!  They spent a lot of their time jumping into the water.

Every once in a while we got them to sit still long enough for a picture!

In another year, they would be pretty independent to play in this area with us not having to be right next to them in the water.  But for now, we pretty much shadowed the kids while they played.

There were even three slides especially for the kids.  This one was the least intimidating and the girls pretty much stuck to this one.  We did get them to go down the other one once or twice but they weren't huge fans since their faces ended up getting wet.

 

There was also a wave pool, lazy river, several large slides and then a larger fort for the older kids with the big water bucket that would dump on you if you weren't careful.  Keith and the girls got drenched and that was all it took for Carli to refuse to go near that area again! 

The kids took awesome naps after we had a lunch of pizza in the room.  After naps, we walked the Grapevine Mills mall before meeting up with Tim, Tori and Eden for dinner and catching up with them.  It was a great day and the Great Wolf Lodge lived up to all the girls expectations thus far!

Cooking with Daddy

Before our trip to the Great Wolf Lodge at the end of January we spent some time in the kitchen cooking up some goodies to take on our trip.  Keith and Ava were in charge of sausage balls.  Ava thought it was so much fun.  Not sure if it was because she got to put her little hands on the food and make balls or if it was b/c Daddy was cooking!

Sweet Bedtime Stories

It isn't often that the girls agree to read the same bedtime story - so we thought we should document the anomaly!  :)

 

And apparently there was something in the air that week b/c we found the girls sharing a bed one morning.

Thing 1 & Thing 2 Say Thank You!

The girls made their thank you notes this year to the theme of Dr. Suess.  :)  It took us till mid January to get them all mailed out b/c Carli signed each and every one of them and it took more than a week of signing a card here, signing a card there before she got her and Ava's name on each card.  Some cards were so special they even got a drawing of a whale, a person or a heart!  :)

 

First we started out painting our hands...

 

Look at those baby blue eyes!  :)

 

 

After they were nice and dry, Carli flipped them over and worked on writing her and Ava's name to them.

Momma added a little embellishment and a note to the back and in the mail they went to all the wonderful people who blessed our children with Christmas gifts this year! 

 

Thanks is in order, yes it's true!

We are very grateful for you!